Rise Up! Rise Up!
by theherocomplex
Summary: The story of Eliza Shepard's life, told in letters. Ghost 'verse.
1. A is for Addition

Note: this fic tells the pre-game story of Eliza Shepard, the protagonist of Ghost, and operates as a companion to that fic.

* * *

**_July 2154, Arcturus Station._**

* * *

Someone had done their best to make the children's wing of Arcturus' medical facility as inviting as possible, painting over the chilly white tile with bright, candy-sweet colors. Hannah assumed the vague shapes were supposed to be animals — maybe a zoo? — but the wide, vacant eyes on the animals unnerved her. She couldn't imagine what the children thought of them.

_Probably gives them nightmares_, she thought, looking away from a smudged, grinning lion. Her hands threatened to shake, so she curled them into fists and stuffed them into the pockets of her trench coat.

"Just through here," said the nurse, turning around to smile at Hannah as he held the door open. "A few more pieces of paperwork to fill out, and then we'll take you to a private room to get acquainted."

Hannah nodded, surprised to find herself unable to speak. The nurse's smile softened, and he reached out to pat her arm with a warm, dry hand. Instead of being offended — the nurse was twenty years younger than her, without a single line in his skin — Hannah let the gesture comfort her.

Her nerves had been rock-steady every step of the way. Not for one moment had she doubted she was making the right decision, and she didn't _doubt_ now, not exactly — but she was _afraid. _

"Do you need a minute?" asked the nurse. "Tea, maybe? Sorry, but we can't offer anything stronger than apple juice here."

A startled laugh burst out of Hannah. "No, that's all right," she said, her voice scraping over the words. "I just — I thought I had prepared for everything."

Now the nurse laughed, and squeezed her forearm. "I hope this won't sound smug, but everyone says that when they get to this point. It doesn't really hit till now. Moment of truth." His expression sobered, and he gave her a warm, but clear-eyed look. "If you're having second thoughts," he said, "now's the time to —"

"No," said Hannah, too quickly. She cleared her throat and rolled her shoulders back. _Breathe it out_. "No second thoughts," she added. "I've wanted this for years — I just didn't think it would ever happen."

And why should it have happened? She was forty-four, career Alliance, single — _and brown, don't forget that_, she thought, because even though everyone claimed that no longer counted, why was it that she always looked so _pale_ in interviews? — not exactly mother material, not now, no matter how often words like _progressive_ and _liberal _were tossed around.

"I put in my application almost nine years ago," Hannah said, her fists twitching in her pockets. She heard the wistful edge in her voice, but when she met the nurse's eyes, all she saw was warm, honest sympathy. "Did all the interviews, every year like clockwork, but there wasn't ever a suitable match." She inhaled deeply, smelling warm laundry, baby powder, and, surprisingly, peonies. "I didn't lose hope, but…it doesn't quite feel real."

The nurse nodded. "I don't think it does for anyone, at least not until they get home. Or until the first sleepless night — then I think it feels real enough."

Hannah laughed again, and her hands finally stopped shaking. She wasn't ready, not even close, but she stepped through the open door. Nine years had been long enough to wait.

* * *

"No, no, not _Elizabeth,_" Hannah snapped at the terminal. "Is this really so difficult? E-L-I-Z-A. _Eliza_."

The VI resolutely filled in the field with _Elizabeth_ once again.

"For fuck's sake!" She punched the desk, then looked around guiltily. _Great_, she thought, nursing sore fingers. _Now I have to watch my language too. Well, I will when she's old enough to understand what it means. _

"Fuck you," she told the terminal, because she wanted to swear while she still had the chance, and sighed as she erased the field. "_Eliza_. Come on, get it right this time. If you're having trouble with this, I don't want to think about what'll happen when I try to put in her middle name. Though I suppose it'll be my fault if you have trouble with that." The only information Hannah had about the birth parents was that the mother was Welsh, and in a fit of sentiment, she had chosen a middle name to suit, something to tie the baby to where she had begun. In light of the difficulty with the VI, the name choice seemed doomed, overly romantic.

_I could always hack the VI_, Hannah thought waspishly, glaring at the terminal. _Two seconds to get in, plant the virus, and — and I'd be walking out of here with a formal complaint. No hacking._ She grit her teeth.

"_Eliza._"

This time, for a wonder, the terminal accepted _Eliza_, and the headache pressing at Hannah's eyes receded. She leaned back in her chair, blowing out a long breath.

"What the hell am I doing?" she asked the empty room. No one had bothered to paint the walls in here; no children came through, only potential parents. How many of them had cursed the same machine? How many of them had given up, changed their minds and walked away?

She closed her eyes and propped her head up on her hands. What the hell _was_ she doing? Dragging a kid along from starship to starship suddenly seemed cruel, not the great adventure she'd planned. Didn't kids deserve grass under their feet and sky over their heads?

And what did she know about _family_? She didn't count the gangs she ran with as soon as she was old enough to keep up, and before then, everything was a blur except the constant, gnawing hunger in her belly. Hannah Shepard knew tech, she knew starships, she knew the Alliance. She didn't know how to be a mother. Hell, she hadn't even known how to be _married._ What she had thought of as addition — one plus one equals two — had been closer to quantum mechanics.

Maybe she wasn't meant to be a mother.

As soon as she thought it, Hannah felt her mind reject the idea. Being a mother wasn't a fantasy. It was sleepless nights and diaper-changing and dealing with teething and nightmares and arguments over what to wear, and at the end of all of it, she'd be alone again. Being a mother was temporary, at best.

_No_, she told herself, the conviction so fierce it surprised her. _It's not. This is for keeps, so make up your mind, Hannah. Do you want this? It's going to hurt, every step of the way. _

In one of the rooms down the hall, a small person — brand new, not even old enough to sit up on her own — was waiting for Hannah to decide. A small person who had spent most of her little life in a hospital ward, in one of the most crowded cities on Earth, warm and cared-for, but alone.

Hannah opened her eyes and stared at the terminal. She had joined the Alliance because it was the best out of a handful of options, and it had given her more than she ever thought she'd deserve: pride, friends, trust, _adventure. _What a gift, to wake up and look forward to each day, instead of worrying about staring down a gun; what a joy to go to sleep and not worry about waking up with a knee in the small of her back.

It wasn't a perfect life, but compared to where she had begun, it was better than she'd ever been led to expect. She helped people, she protected the weak, but for nine years, she had wanted to do _more_.

_I want to be more,_ she thought, and straightened her back. _I want this, and I want to give her _more_ too. _

She breathed in deeply. The smell of peonies reached her, even with the door closed, and she smiled as she looked down at the terminal.

"Okay," she said. "Let's see how you do with this: _Cerridwen."_

* * *

She had to wait for nearly an hour before they finally brought her daughter to her.

"Sorry about the delay," said the nurse. He shifted the bundle in his arms, and Hannah's heart leapt, her pulse a nervous flutter in her ears. "Someone was a little messy while she ate, so we had to give her a bath."

"Oh," said Hannah, inanely. She stood up, smoothing down the front of her blouse, not sure what to do with her hands. "Is she — is she ready?"

"She's ready," said the nurse. Mercifully, he didn't ask Hannah if she was. He only smiled, eyes bright when his gaze met Hannah's. The thought struck her that his job must be almost unbearably sweet: he watched families being born, every day, lives entwining against almost impossible odds. She had walked into the waiting room as Commander Hannah Shepard, Alliance Navy, and she would be walking out as —

"All right, baby," said the nurse. "Let's say hi to your mom."

Hannah didn't remember taking the steps that carried her across the room. She didn't remember reaching out, or what the nurse said as she took the squirming bundle from him. But she remembered the tiny weight as it settled into her arms, how irrevocable it felt, and how she didn't feel afraid, not at all.

She tugged the blanket away from the baby's — _her baby's_ — face, and let out a wet, shaky laugh as the little girl — _her little girl_ — let out a wicked squall, her face red as a sunburn.

"Oh my god, listen to her," said the nurse around a laugh. "She wants you to know she's around."

Hannah ignored him. She reached out with a fingertip and touched her daughter's cheek, smoothing away the single tear that squeezed out from under the thin, translucent lids.

This was a whole new kind of mathematics: one plus one didn't equal two, the way it always had before. One plus one equaled one all over again, but this _one_ was a family. Hannah, the mother; Eliza, the daughter.

"Hi, sweetie," she murmured. "Hi, Eliza. I'm your —" She swallowed, and laughed again as Eliza yelled again, one tiny fist waving indignantly in the air. "I'm your mom, and we need to work on your communication skills."

The tiny fist waved again. _Good luck with that_, Hannah imagined Eliza saying.

"I'm your mom," she said again, and felt a warm prickle start at the corners of her eyes.

"Congratulations," said the nurse, beaming like a sunrise. "She's beautiful."

Hannah smiled dreamily down at Eliza, and touched her fist with her forefinger. Eliza clutched at it, still grumbling unhappily, but she settled as Hannah rocked her. "Yes," she whispered. "She is. My beautiful girl."

_Welcome to the galaxy, sweetie_, Hannah thought much, much later, as the shuttle lifted off the launch pad. Eliza cooed and nestled closer, her mouth leaving damp marks on Hannah's coat. _I give it all to you. Every planet, every star, every rock. It's all yours. Welcome home, my girl. _

* * *

**_Note:_ **For dramatic purposes, I've elided the parts of the adoption process where Hannah is rigorously screened and got to see Eliza and determined that yes, this is a match that would work.


	2. B is for Bruises

_**The Citadel, 2161.**_

Of all the muscles in her body, the one Lamia thought she could do most easily without was her heart. Foolish, faithless muscle; she'd wasted its strength on someone undeserving for the last time. A matron now these past four centuries, and still she gave of herself as freely as a maiden of thirty summers.

Matron or not, her heart still ached. The real thing, not just the metaphorical heart that had been ever so efficiently broken by —

_No_, she told herself. Don't say her name. _Don't even think it. Sit up straight and put on a smile. You're an asari on the Citadel. You have no reason not to smile._

The Citadel was her race's playground, whether one's favorite game was commerce, fashion, politics, or — she shuddered, delicately, and her smile slipped for a tiny instant — affairs of the heart. She would find a distraction, and chase away all memories of her bruised, tender heart, until it healed. Until she was, once more, herself complete: Lamia Odrade, matron, instructrix, a sealed room in a high tower.

Lamia's good intentions lasted until she stepped off the elevator onto the Presidium, only to be greeted by a low, earthy, growl of a laugh that took her straight back to humid, lazy mornings with Shiala —

Oh, _damn_. She ducked to the side of the elevator and leaned against the wall, one hand over her heart. _Ridiculous! _she scolded herself. _Childish! You weren't bonded. Forty years is nothing at all, especially at your age._

Forty years certainly hadn't been enough, just a handful of sweet mornings and sweeter dusks, sharing all, holding nothing back. She had given so much of herself, in love and trust, and now she held her reward: a long march of bruises banding her sore heart. And all because of Shiala — beautiful Shiala, Shiala with skin smooth and cool as a seashell, Shiala of the dirty laugh and dirtier jokes. Had the melds not been true? Was there a discordant note in their music that only Shiala could hear — or, worse yet, that Lamia herself had ignored, swept away instead by the ocean within Shiala? The music had been sweet enough for Lamia, sweet enough for her to consider risking the censure of their fellows, and asking Shiala to begin a family. What children they would have made, strong and kind, listeners as well as leaders.

And sweet enough to consider the other dream, of a little school, clinging to a cliffside in the north of Thessia. She'd even picked out the site, and been on the verge of putting in a bid — all depending, of course, on the answer Shiala would give her, when she finally screwed up the courage to ask.

But then the great Lady Benezia had crooked her little finger, and Shiala ran to answer the call, with hardly a backward look. She had found a family she preferred to the dream of one shared with Lamia.

_Family_. More than three hundred years of the best etiquette training on Thessia couldn't force Lamia to hold back her sneer. What a crude joke. How Shiala must be laughing now with her fellow acolytes, laughing at her narrow escape from the trap of pureblood children.

A bitter surge of rage rushed up Lamia's throat. It caught her off-guard so thoroughly that her biotics pushed aside her control for a moment, and her corona flared around her. The breach shocked Lamia breathless. She hadn't lost control since before her commando days, and never in public. She drew the energy back into herself, soothing it with mental fingers, and buried her head in her hands. _Oh, Goddess, the shame. Forgive my unkind thoughts, forgive my hateful heart. I am sorry._

Such bitterness and anger were beneath her. What was it her own mother had said, when she pouted and whined as a long-ago child? _Seek to provide the joy of others, and you will find you have lessened your own darkness._ Would she ignore those words, spoken by one she loved, and one so much wiser than her in all things?

Lamia stood up straight, her posture like armor. No one seemed to have noticed her outburst, though it would be gross flattery to tell herself that it had been completely missed. At least no one commented, and for that she was grateful. She tested her control, and found it solid once more. There would be no more flares, no more reckless displays of emotion. She smoothed the lines of her coat, and found herself startled into a smile when her fingers ran over the telltale lump of an OSD.

A proposal lay coded within the thin disc — and a reminder that not all her dreams had died, though it seemed she would have to give up the austere little cliff-clinging school. Human military ships lacked so much _elegance_, though they certainly made up for it in adaptability.

She adjusted the collar of her coat to better frame her face, and counted to twenty. When she stepped back into the rush of Presidium foot traffic, she looked like nothing more than a pretty, mature asari, who smiled as if her heart had never been broken.

* * *

"Oh, god, Steven, calm down, it's nothing." Hannah shook Hackett's hand and stood on her toes to kiss his cheek, refusing to acknowledge how badly she wanted to laugh at his horrified face. "Just a bruise. I'm fine."

"What happened?" Hackett sat down as Hannah unbuttoned her jacket and handed it off to a waiting attendant. "You look —"

"Like I just went a few rounds with a krogan?" She took her seat with an appreciative glance around the restaurant, and whistled quietly. "I didn't think your message was serious. I mean, Carvassial's? A bit too-too for us Alliance types, isn't it?"

Hackett didn't shrug. Hannah had never seen the man make such a gesture, and never would. A shrug meant admitting uncertainty, and Steven Hackett and uncertainty were mutually exclusive concepts. "It seemed fitting, given the nature of the meeting."

Hannah raised an eyebrow as a salarian waiter placed a glass of sky-blue wine in front of her. "Yes, the meeting. Are you going to tell me what this is all about?" Before she could stop herself, she added, "I had plans with Eliza, you know. She wanted to see the krogan memorial."

Immune to uncertainty he might have been, but even Steven Hackett was vulnerable to guilt. Hannah didn't think anyone else in the restaurant would recognize the subtle, there-and-gone downturn at the corners of his mouth, but she did. Twenty-five years of friendship meant she knew when she had Hackett cornered by the way he shifted, almost imperceptibly, and let go of the urge to keep pricking at him.

"Or is it a surprise?" she said, coy enough to make him narrow his eyes at her. "Do I get twenty guesses? Is it larger or smaller than a breadbox? Does it smell worse than varren —"

"You're a horrible person," Hackett said, with the tiniest hint of a smile. "Have I told you that?"

"Not this conversation," she replied, and took a sip of her wine. Too sweet, too thick, and too expensive.

"Where is Eliza?"

Hannah swallowed a second careful sip, then set her wineglass down. Too strong, too; two glasses and she'd be telling stories from basic. _Must be asari wine_. "She's with Lieutenant Forbes and her kids, down at that big park down on the edge of Tayseri Ward. We can see the memorial later."

A companionable silence stretched out between them. Hannah idly considered other questions as the time passed — _is it explosive? Does it talk? When will we see a menu?_ — but didn't push for conversation. If Anderson had been sitting across the table, she might have felt pressed to find something to say, but Hackett appreciated silence. After the buzz and rattle of climbing through the wards, Hannah appreciated silence too.

"That bruise," Hackett said at last. "A run-in with Eliza's biotics, right?"

Hannah nodded, then rolled her sleeves up past her elbow. "And these," she said, brandishing two forearms covered in dark bruises, "are from when Eliza had a nightmare night before last, and threw her bookcase across the room. I walked right into it when I heard her yell." She grinned at Hackett's expression, which couldn't seem to decide if it wanted to be amused or horrified. "It's okay, Steven, you can laugh. Remember the old saying? Comedy is tragedy plus time." She rolled her sleeves down before any of her fellow diners — all better dressed than her — could see the bruises. "Time to see if an amp will help. We're meeting with a specialist tomorrow morning at Huerta."

Hackett frowned. The scar at his mouth twisted and whitened, fading as he spoke. "Are you sure? She's awfully young."

"Seven this past month." Hannah sighed and cast a longing glance at her wine, wishing it was beer. If she'd been down on Zakera Ward with Eliza and the Forbeses, like she had planned, she would've had beer. And a burger, with greasy fries and too much ketchup, and _goddammit_, why had Hackett asked her here? She was starving, and they hadn't seen a real menu yet. "But it's at the point where the cons have outweighed the pros. She's got no control. The second she gets upset or stressed, her corona flares, and then it's game over. It's a good thing most of my equipment stays down in the lab or the armory, because she builds up a hell of a lot of static."

"Seven seems a little young," Hackett ventured, still frowning. He picked up his wine glass, long fingers gripping the stem, but set the glass back down without taking a drink. "BaaT doesn't implant their students until they're ten."

"BaaT? That Conatix nightmare waiting to happen?" At Hackett's nod, Hannah scoffed and fell back in her seat. The salarians and turians at the next table sent her sharp glances — one didn'tscoff in Carvassial's — but she ignored them to turn a glare on Hackett. "Not to be rude —"

"Which means you're about to be," said Hackett, deadpan.

"— but they creep me out. One of their representatives called me a few months ago, asking if I was interested in sending my child to BaaT." Hackett raised an eyebrow, and Hannah nodded. "You heard me. She's registered as a biotic, and as my dependent. It's a matter of public record, but the fact they're fishing this hard for recruits puts me off." She saw her hand creeping toward her wine glass and pulled it back. _Bad Hannah, save yourself for beer. _"Not to mention the fact that they didn't go to the Council before setting up at Jump Zero. I'm not a fan of going around begging the other races for help any more than we need to, but the asari have offered help, and they're experts. God, they practically start training their daughters right out of the womb."

"Not _right_ out of the womb," said a cool, polished-marble voice from over Hackett's shoulder. "Well, womb-equivalent."

Hannah stood as Hackett did, and saw a tall, slender asari sweeping toward them, the hem of her black overcoat whispering over the floor. She had warm, nut-brown eyes, with white whorls and streaks on her brows and jawline. Her skin nearly matched the wine in Hannah and Hackett's glasses. Without a doubt, she was the loveliest woman — _woman-equivalent_, Hannah thought wryly — in the room. The salarians and turians at the next table couldn't seem to stop staring, and Hannah nearly winked at them before she caught herself.

"Commander Shepard, I'd like you to meet Lady Lamia Odrade. Lady Lamia, Commander Hannah Shepard."

"Oh, please, I'm no matriarch," said Lamia, without taking her eyes off Hannah's. "Just Lamia will do." She held out a fine-boned hand to Hannah. "Commander, it's a pleasure."

Hannah felt the strength — subdued, easily underestimated — in Lamia's fingers, and decided to try a smile. "Hannah, please," she said. "I take it you're part of Hackett's project, Lamia?"

Lamia beamed as she took the seat Hackett held out for her. "You could say that," she said, tilting her head to turn the force of her smile on Hackett. "Would you like to do the big reveal, Captain?"

To his credit, Hackett didn't waste time teasing or playing coy. He met Hannah's gaze, and without a trace of a smile, simply said, "Lamia has been contracted by the Alliance to design a biotics program —"

"You're a teacher?" Hannah interrupted, stunned. _There's no such thing as providence_, she thought, smashing down the hope as it struggled to rise. Across the table, Hackett gave her a nod._No such thing_, she told herself.

Lamia gave Hannah a gentle smile, and all the polish in her manner fell away. Was it regret, or something deeper? Before Hannah had time to read Lamia's expression, the asari reached out and squeezed her wrist.

"I was," said Lamia. "And I would like to be again."

* * *

"She's too young to truly start training," Lamia said, hours later, as she watched the human girl swing by her legs from a tree. "Too much growing yet to do. She won't need the implant till she's ready to train, but the exercises I told you about should keep the flares to a minimum until then."

Hannah sighed. "She grows like a weed," she said, wistfully. "Any day now, she'll be taller than me."

"I think you have a little time left," Lamia replied. Down below them, in the park, Eliza let out a bellow and sprinted toward a small knot of children, spilling them end over end before landing in the middle. Laughter and shrieks floated up to them. Lamia couldn't quite suppress a grin. "Goddess, but she's…"

This time, Hannah laughed, her face creasing into faint, agreeable wrinkles. "Yeah, I get that a lot."

_Oh, I like her_, thought Lamia, smiling now with not just her face but what felt like her entire body. The human woman at her side glowed with affection, fierce, undiluted, like a low-banked fire. _This Hannah Shepard and I will get along quite nicely, I think._

Perhaps she had been born for this, to always stand apart, one degree from the center. Shiala, the cliffside school — they must be put aside and mourned, for there was work to be done, and in no half-measures.

"It won't be long," she told Hannah. "The program will take time to design and implement, but by then, your daughter should be ready. Five, maybe six years, and then she can begin."

Hannah reached up and squeezed her shoulder. "Thank you," she said. "This is — well, it's a dream come true. To know Eliza will have help when she needs it."

Love came in so many forms: mother, daughter, lover, friend. Lamia had lost one, forever, like sand through a sieve, but perhaps the Goddess, in infinite mercy and with infinite humor, had seen fit to provide her with others. And all bruises healed, no matter how they were acquired.

"I'll teach her all I know," she promised Hannah. "What she does with it is up to her, but she won't lack the proper instruction."

Eliza picked herself up off the grass and set off running again, arms spread wide as wings as she shrieked toward another set of children. _Oh no, a Vanguard_, Lamia thought. _Thank the Goddess I enjoy a challenge._


	3. C is for Canticle

**_The Citadel, 2163._**

When it came to the classics, Hannah believed you needed to start early.

"That was _awesome_, Mom!" Eliza crowed as they left the movie theater. "I mean, it was _old_ and kind of corny, but —" She shook herself, grinning gap-toothed up at Hannah, and started sweeping her left arm in wide arcs, making lightsaber noises.

Hannah grabbed Eliza's right hand and tugged her back against her side; the foot traffic in this part of the Citadel wasn't heavy, but still thick enough to lose an easily-distracted nine-year-old in. Especially if the nine-year-old in question was busy trying to breathe like Darth Vader.

"I'm glad you liked it, sweetie," said Hannah, squeezing Eliza's hand. "Hungry? We can go to that noodles place you like, the one that has the blue spices."

"Okay." Eliza frowned slightly as they crossed the lobby and turned a wide, innocent blue gaze on Hannah, her high ponytail sweeping over her shoulders. She reached back to rub her amp port, a new habit that Hannah had already given up on breaking. "Mom, you said there were only three Star Wars movies, but that sign said —"

"Must have been a misprint," Hannah interrupted, adding the white lie to the total and wincing a little. _No one who's seen episode one through three can blame me for lying_, she decided, and stepped out into the flow of traffic. "We can watch the next two on the vidscreen when we get home," she offered. "The next one is the best, but I think you're going to like the third one most. It has these little guys called Ewoks and —"

Someone bumped into Hannah from behind, knocking her hand out of Eliza's and nearly sending her sprawling on the floor. If she had been in New York, she would have shoved back, snarling _watch it, asshole_ at whoever was at fault, but then a voice hissed in her ear, and all thoughts of shoving or insults were forgotten.

"Your kid's a freak," said the voice. "A fucking _freak_."

Hannah snapped upright, already wheeling on the speaker. A towering human man glared down at her, all sculpted lips and perfectly-styled blonde hair, his gaze glittering cold and malevolent with disgust.

Oh, Hannah knew the type. Used to people letting his opinions slide because he was strong and good-looking, or maybe just because he was male. She didn't know the details, but she knew _him_, and back in the Reds, they had their own ways of dealing with people like him. She wasn't a Red any longer, she was Alliance to the bone, but this bastard hadn't insulted her or the uniform. He'd insulted _Eliza, _and she felt her old armor sliding into place: a glare that made men twice her size back down, bracing her feet to take the first hit, and thumbing on the micro-fabricator on her omnitool. Sensing a fight, or at least a show, a small crowd started to gather around them, eyes eager. Hannah felt the urge to scream at them — _hey, you want to watch, or you want to get out of the way so I can get my kid away from this piece of shit?_ — but no one moved, no one said a word. She growled, backing toward the edge of the crowd, and met the man's eyes without flinching.

"Back off," she snapped, teeth bared and cheeks flushed hot. "Or I'll kick your teeth out through your asshole."

"Mom!" Eliza yelped, shocked. Hannah took her eyes off the man for a handful of seconds to check on Eliza, who stared at her wide-eyed and pale, her mouth hanging open as she clung to Hannah's left hand.

The man, momentarily stunned by Hannah's sudden viciousness, leapt when he saw her distracted. "Big talk," he said through a laugh, perfect white teeth on display. Hannah bristled, torn between staying true to her word or getting Eliza out of there, and had just decided on the latter when the man took a step closer. "But I guess I'd talk big too, if I was walking around with my own personal bomb." He nodded at Eliza, who had gone so pale even her lips were white, and smirked when she took a step closer to Hannah. "Like I said, a _freak_."

Eliza made a small noise, almost a whine, and reached back to touch her amp. Hannah watched the connection form: her amp. A freak. The amp made her a freak. _Freak_, said Eliza's blank gaze. _I'm a freak. _

Forget smashing his teeth down his throat and out the other end; Hannah was going to murder him. Two seconds, that's all it would take to fabricate an omniblade, and —

"Mommy, _no!_" screamed Eliza, tugging on Hannah's hand as she took a step into the man's personal space. Eliza's voice broke on the last word, and then Hannah heard the air crackle with rich static as all the hairs on her body stood on end, and gravity upended itself.

She hit the floor face-first, and blacked out.

* * *

"Commander Shepard?"

Hannah waved the medic away as the C-Sec officer approached. Other than a bitch of a headache, she was fine. Well — fine, except for the greasy, anxious twist in her stomach, when she turned her head to the right and saw Eliza's feet poking out from under a grey shock blanket. As Hannah watched a second medic gently touch Eliza's amp, checking for damage from the flare, Eliza closed her eyes. She huddled deeper in the blanket, hiding her face.

Shame replaced the anxiety, swift as a flash flood. How the _hell_ could she have overreacted so badly? She was a grown woman, a _mother_, for God's sake. She couldn't start fights — hell, she couldn't _finish_ them now. _I need to be smarter,_ she thought, misery settling over her in a bleak cloud.

"Commander Shepard?" said the officer again. A turian, tall and dark-plated, with clay-red markings. "I'll be as quick as I can. I just need you to answer a few questions."

Hannah nodded. "I should have walked away," she muttered. "Stupid. So _fucking_ stupid."

The officer's mandibles shifted in what might have been annoyance, or confusion. "There's no question, ma'am," he said, in a kinder voice than she expected. "None of this was your fault. The other human was the obvious aggressor."

"Yeah?" Hannah sighed. "Maybe, but I shouldn't have let it get so far, I should have —" She saw Eliza's shoulders start to shake, and stood up. "Excuse me, I need to —"

She ignored the officer calling her name and crouched next to Eliza, nodding at the medic. "Sweetie, hey, breathe it out —"

"He called me a _freak_," Eliza said, her voice still muffled by the blanket. "Because I've got…because I'm a b-biotic." Hannah heard her take a deep, shaky breath, then Eliza lifted her head. Her eyes were distant, fixed on a point just over Hannah's shoulder. Sometimes, after a bad flare, Eliza withdrew into herself like this, tearless and bleak, and more than her rare tantrums, these moments terrified Hannah. She had no idea how to save Eliza from them, no way to distract her. No way to _reach_ Eliza, because in these moments her daughter closed herself off and retreated to heal herself alone.

Of all the nightmares Hannah had had since she brought Eliza home, the one she had the most was of Eliza not coming back from this retreat. She felt the chill in her gut, like a thick, sluggish snake, and hugged Eliza close, kissing the top of her head, her ear, her cheek, whatever she could reach.

"You're not a freak, sweetie," she whispered. "He was _wrong_, do you hear me? He didn't know what he was talking about. He was a bad man and he's in a lot of trouble now." _So am I_, she thought, as the C-Sec officer shifted from foot to foot, angular face unreadable as he watched them. "I'm so sorry, sweetie. I shouldn't have said anything to him. I'm sorry."

"He saw my amp," said Eliza, in a dull voice. "Everyone can see it now. They're all going to know." She huddled into her blanket, eyes on the floor. "It's not fair," she said, and closed her eyes.

Eliza was gone, locked deep in that vast, occluded, unknowable space lurking in her head. Hannah pulled her into her lap, and Eliza came without resistance, like a rag doll, like a bundle of matchsticks, and said nothing while Hannah quietly answered the officer's questions.

* * *

_I could call Lamia,_, thought Hannah, staring at the terminal in their quarters. They had made it back to the _Kaku_ without incident, Eliza walking silently at Hannah's side, her hair spread over her shoulders in a heavy, dark curtain. Hannah had a meeting first thing the next morning with the XO, no doubt to go over the report sent over from C-Sec, but she couldn't muster up any dread regarding it. Not when Eliza sat on the couch, paper-pale and silent, staring at her hands.

When Hannah glanced at her, Eliza heaved a sigh that shook her narrow shoulders and rubbed her nose with the back of her hand.

"Want something to eat, sweetie?" said Hannah, turning her back resolutely on the terminal. She had to save Lamia for when things were at their worst; the asari was busy with the first group of human biotics, and while Hannah didn't doubt she would spare the time, Hannah didn't want to turn her into a crutch. Lamia's help was the last resort. As long as Hannah had a chance of pulling Eliza out of her funk on her own, she wouldn't call.

"No thank you," said Eliza, too polite for Hannah's taste. She would have preferred an eye roll, or a _duh Mom, I'm _always_ hungry_. Then, before Hannah could ask if she wanted a drink, or to watch a vid, Eliza turned her bright, pale gaze on her and said "What do I do, if people are _afraid_ of me?"

_Too canny by half,_ Hannah mused as she dropped on to the couch next to Eliza. "They're not all afraid of what you can do," she said, taking Eliza's thin hand in hers and squeezing it, her heart aching at the feel of the fragile bones in her daughter's fingers. So very fragile, her daughter, like all children. But more resilient than expected, too, like all children. Hannah didn't doubt that Eliza would weather this, young and bird-boned as she was, but after such a catastrophic mistake on her part, it was more important than ever that Hannah give her the tools to do so. "And if they _are_ afraid, they're idiots. Biotics are new, and not a lot of people understand them, but being scared of something new is for idiots."

Eliza gave her a wan smile, but it disappeared almost immediately, replaced by a frown — Eliza's thinking frown, Hannah thought with relief. "But what do I _do_?" she asked. "I can do all this _stuff_, but…" She huffed and flopped back against the couch, knees knocking together.

Hannah let go of Eliza's hand and ran her fingers through Eliza's hair. "You do the right thing," she said. "You don't listen to the idiots, you don't start fights —" _Not like your dumbass mother did_ "— and you figure out how you can help people. It's an advantage, sweetie, even if people can't see that now, and you use advantages to help people, right?"

"Right," said Eliza, still frowning. Her hand crept up to touch her amp, but as Hannah watched, Eliza clenched her hand into a fist and let it drop to her lap. "Even if they're scared of me?"

"_Especially_ if they're scared of you," said Hannah, cupping the back of Eliza's head in the palm of her hand. Such a fragile thing. The depth of her love terrified her; she had killed before, on orders from the Reds and the Alliance, but never before on instinct, because something she loved was threatened. _I would have done it, too_, she thought, rubbing her thumb in absent circles on Eliza's scalp. _I'd have killed him and all he did was talk. _"Because then they'll see all the good you do, and they won't be scared anymore. They'll trust you."

Eliza sighed and finally, finally relaxed against Hannah's side, curling close. "The way you do," she said, her voice slow and thoughtful. "Like the Alliance does."

A sliver of unease passed through Hannah's gut, feather-light and sharp, oh so very sharp. It was gone before she could analyze the _why_ of it, and she pulled Eliza close. "That's one way," she said, and kissed Eliza's head.


	4. D is for Divide

**A/N: **A drabble takes place during the break between sections, though it would break up the flow too much to post it here. I'd be happy to link to it if anyone is curious!

* * *

**_SSV Payne, May 2164. _**

By nature, Hannah wasn't the nostalgic type. She had her pocketful of regrets, but no more; she had too much to get done to be carrying around a ruck full of _what-ifs_. If motherhood had taught her anything, it was the importance of forward motion.

"Mom?" Eliza peered into Hannah's room, slumping gracelessly against the doorframe. She still wore her school uniform, and Hannah realized with a pang that the hems of her pants needed to be let down again, for the second time in three months. "My homework's done. Are we going to eat soon?"

Hannah hauled a smile onto her face. "What? Those sandwiches after school weren't enough?"

"That was _two hours_ ago," Eliza said, punctuating her words with a gusty sigh and a more pronounced slump. "I'm hungry again. Can we eat soon? Please?"

"Soon," Hannah promised. She nodded at her terminal. "I have to answer some emails first. Set the table, and I'll punch something up in a few minutes."

"Okay," said Eliza, sliding away from the doorframe and slipping down the hallway. Hannah listened to her footsteps fading away, her gaze falling to her hands.

No, not the nostalgic type, not by a long shot. Still, sometimes, she looked at her hands, and didn't see the calluses or the ropey veins under her skin, but blood, slick and black under the streetlights.

_The alley. Three of us, five of them. Bad odds, especially since we were technically on their turf. Too many shots to count, no way to tell if mine did any damage. Everyone was screaming, and I was bending over someone. I don't even remember her name. But she was crying, and we both knew the medigel wasn't going to help. Then sirens, and lights, and when I held up my hands, they were covered with blood. _

The blood was long gone; she couldn't even remember what it smelled like. Her hands were clean now, worn from hard use, but clean.

Clean as the smell of medigel in a dark alley, clean as the paint on a police skycar, clean as the stark black ink of her signature as she gave herself to the Alliance.

Not that she regretted it, not for a second. The Alliance had only asked that she put her skills to better use.

She shook her head and raked her fingers through her hair, where the black strands were just beginning to be shot through with white. Each new streak was a stark reminder of time's complete indifference to whether she wished things had gone differently - to if she wished she had stayed on Earth, and found a way to put down roots in real soil.

Hannah missed the smell of earth.

If the mood struck her, she could go down to the hydroponics labs and spend a spare half-hour wandering through the quiet, green-tinted space, running her fingers along the smooth leaves and resisting the urge to steal tomatoes or a handful of grapes, but underneath all the flowers and leaves, she would still smell tile and metal. What she wanted to smell was _earth_: dirty, stinking, warm earth, full of worms and rocks. She wanted to feel it under her fingernails, grimed into her knuckles, tracked down her face in streaks and mixed with her sweat.

_This is not how I should be spending my free night_, she thought. _There are things to do. Emails to return. Dinner to cook. Vids to watch. A bathroom to clean. _

None of the tasks, apparently, were enough to keep her from sitting down on the edge of her bed, staring at her hands. Her knuckles were clean, but thick with old scars; her fingernails, from necessity, were trimmed almost to the quick. She had good hands, strong hands, sensitive hands. Hands that could manipulate hair-thin wires without snapping them. Hands that could hold a gun without wavering. No matter what she used her hands for, they didn't waver. Hannah clenched them into fists, breathing hard through her nose as a wave of longing for earth, for _Earth,_ moved through her, heavy as sea-water. God, she even missed that too, the smell of the sea carried on the wind, salt and sand, clean as glass.

The desire made no sense; she had left Earth, and earth, long behind her; she left the Sol System once she got her first assignment and never went back. On leave, she contented herself with the Citadel and its gardens and lakes, if she wanted a glimpse of something other than corridors and elevators. It had been enough for her for almost thirty years, and Eliza had never complained. Sharp-boned, bright-eyed Eliza, who laughed like a bird but grinned with too many teeth, and who was growing so fast there seemed to be another five inches of her at the breakfast table every morning. Eliza, who had spent her first two weeks on Earth and nothing since. She wouldn't even remember what the planet smelled like; she was a child of space, of starships, drive cores, and the silent, hulking mass relays.

_She doesn't have to be, _Hannah decided, relaxing her hands. _She can choose what soil she wants, same as I did. _

"Mom!" Eliza yelled. "I set the table! Should I order dinner?" A considering pause followed, then Eliza's voice came down the hallway again, more a wheedle than a yell. "It's pizza night and I know what toppings you like. Please?"

Hannah closed her eyes, a sting in her chest and her eye. "Sure," she called back, already constructing her question, knowing simplest was best. _Sweetie, do you want to see Earth? _"Extra cheese is fine, no extra-extra allowed."

"Aw," Eliza said, disappointed, but agreeable enough.

* * *

**_The Citadel, July 2164._ **

Hannah forgot the lofty beginnings for Eliza's trip to Earth within minutes of seeing her daughter step off the shuttle on the Citadel. All her questions — _What did you like best? Did you see the Grand Canyon? Why are you so sunburned? _— evaporated, boiled away by sheer hot embarrassment.

"You ran right into that little boy," she hissed, dragging Eliza away from the turian family. "God, Eliza, why didn't you look where you were going?" She cast a look over her shoulder, back at the family, just in time to realize the father wore the simple blue-and-black C-Sec uniform.

"I was looking!" Eliza spat, trying to squirm out of Hannah's grip. "He saw me coming! He could have moved!"

In spite of her flushed cheeks and the migraine beginning just behind her eyes, Hannah had to bite her tongue to hold down a laugh. _I have to remember to tell Lamia about this_, she thought. _One more mark in the Vanguard column_. Outwardly, she kept her face properly outraged, even as Eliza hissed and wriggled like an angry kitten, arms flailing.

"You were the one running when you shouldn't have been," Hannah told her, pulling them out of the thoroughfare and onto a bench. Eliza's hair had come loose from its braid, and Hannah brushed it out with her fingers before plaiting it again. "Really, sweetie, you need to be more careful."

"I _know,_" Eliza said, in the tone she reserved for the moment when anger started to transform into guilt. "But he still could have _moved._" She twisted away from Hannah's hands, undoing the careful braid as she shrugged down in her seat. Her hair fell over her face, hiding what Hannah was sure was a truly memorable pout. "You didn't even ask how my trip was."

"It's on my to-do list," said Hannah, not surprised at all to find her own anger dulling, losing its heat. Two months without Eliza rattling around their quarters had aged Hannah by about twenty years. Her daughter was _home._ "After I decide whether or not to ground you for about fifteen years."

"Ten years," said Eliza. When Hannah tucked Eliza's hair behind her ear to peer at her face, Eliza gave her a sly little smirk. "He said I talked a lot. I deserve time off for that."

Hannah nodded, silently adding to her message to Lamia. "Do you? Well, we'll see about that. I think we'll start with some old-fashioned deprivation, though."

"Deprivation?" Eliza frowned up at her. "So like, no…"

"No dessert —"

"Mom!"

" — for a week. And you have to clean the bathroom when we get home."

Eliza looked stricken. "I just ran into him once!" she protested. "He got right back up!"

Hannah leveled a finger at Eliza's face. "Once was enough, my girl." She sighed, and let the rest of her anger flow out of her with her breath. When she slung an arm around Eliza's narrow shoulders and pulled her tight against her side, Eliza resisted long enough for a splinter to work its way into Hannah's chest before settling with her head on Hannah's shoulder. "Was it a good trip? Your messages sounded like you were having fun."

"It was cool," said Eliza. She plucked at the seam of Hannah's trousers with knobby fingers, a thin line of dirt under each fingernail. "It was _quiet. _Up here, even at night, you can still hear the engines and there's always people talking and walking around. But down there? When you get into the woods? It's just so quiet. You can hear stuff moving in the trees. It wasn't creepy!" she added, glancing up at Hannah, all urgency. "I wasn't _scared_. It was just different. And dirty."

"I can see that," said Hannah, laughing, lifting Eliza's hand and waving it in the air. "Sunny, too. You'll have a million new freckles once that sunburn fades."

"Yeah, I know," said Eliza, snuggling closer to Hannah. "We went to the beach, and it was _smelly_, like something _died_, and this one kid, Paul, found a jellyfish and threw it in another kid's face and she had to go to the hospital because it stung her." Eliza chewed the inside of her lip, then tilted her face up to Hannah's. "Do hanar sting?" she asked, eyebrows puckered together. "They look like jellyfish."

"They are _not_ jellyfish, however, so saying that is an insult." _And borderline racist_, thought Hannah, happy to be able to head off this potential cross-species crisis before it went any farther. The image of the little turian boy being bowled over, squealing in pain when Eliza's elbow caught him in the carapace, would replay behind her closed lids for a long, long time. "I don't know if they sting, but I know they're very strong. Not elcor-strong, but plenty strong." She shifted, letting Eliza's weight fall against her side instead of her shoulder. "What else did you like? Did you see a sunrise?"

"Mom, I saw like, fifty. The counselors said the colors were so bright because of pollution and once the atmosphere got cleaned up they wouldn't look like that anymore. Same with sunsets. But the stars were nice. We had a contest about who could name the most constellations and I could name twenty but one girl knew them all. Her dads are cartographers though so it was kind of cheating for her to play. But I could run faster than her so that was okay. And there were three other kids with biotics there so we got a tent to ourselves and I got their extranet addresses and maybe next year we can have a tent together again."

"Next year?" Hannah kept her smile in place, relieved that no anti-biotic sentiment had crept into the trip, even as her stomach twisted. "You want to go back? To Earth?" _To stay?_

Eliza nodded. "Just for the summer, though. I don't think I want to live there, Mom. It's _so_ dirty. I like ships and the Citadel better and you weren't —" She paused, hesitating over her words in a way Hannah had never seen, and it left a fresh knot in Hannah's gut. "You weren't there," Eliza finished, not looking at Hannah. "I know I sound like a baby but I missed — missed you a lot."

Oh, that kind of honesty was irresistible; too candid, too raw, and the way Eliza paused before giving it only sweetened the sting. Hannah closed her eyes and rested her cheek on Eliza's head, breathing in the smells of salt, sunlight, and rich, fresh earth. The smells would fade, all too soon. Until then, Hannah had a little Earth of her own, carried back through space in her daughter's skin, her daughter's hands.


	5. E is for Eidolon

**_E is for Eidolon_**

**_2166, SSV Eleanor Roosevelt _**

It took all of Eliza's self-control not to bounce on the balls of her feet or chew on a hangnail or play with her braid while Instructrix Odrade circled around her. For the past week, Eliza had hardly been able to sleep, too excited by the prospect of finally getting to use her biotics for more than just routine medical exams, but all that adrenaline seemed wasted now. Instructrix Odrade just kept _looking _at her, smiling a little, not saying a word.

By Eliza's silent count, it had been more than fifteen minutes that the instructrix had kept her waiting. Except for a polite hello at the door when Mom dropped Eliza off and a quiet request for Eliza to stand in the middle of the floor, she hadn't said a single thing to Eliza. The whole list of questions that Eliza had come up with over the course of the week tried to come out in one long rush, all at once, but in the face of so much silent scrutiny, Eliza couldn't quite get the words out. The room around her was so quiet, so peaceful with its blue-toned light and soft cushions, that anything she said would sound like a shout, even if she whispered.

So she stayed quiet, and tried not to move. Her right ankle itched with a steady prickle, but she refused to bend down to itch it. This much silence felt like a test. If she moved, or talked, she'd fail — and Eliza didn't want to go home and tell Mom about how she'd screwed up on the first day, not when Mom had worked so hard to get her into the class. She kept her hands at her sides, loose and relaxed, and faced forward, memorizing the placement of the cushions to give herself a distraction.

Instructrix Odrade hummed to herself and stopped behind Eliza, close enough that Eliza could smell her, a mixture of clean sweat and some fancy asari flower. Ozone too, a sharp-sweet crackle in her nose.

The prickle got stronger.

_Cushions make sense, _Eliza thought. _Soft stuff to throw around, so if a student messes up, they'll just knock someone over and not like, break their arm_. She had seen the students using the cushions after the class, laughing and throwing them at each other as their biotics flared in rich layers of blue and silver around them. It didn't look graceful or like they really knew what they were doing, but it looked _fun_. And no one seemed self-conscious about the amps at the base of their skulls.

_When are we going to get started?_ Eliza bit down on the question. With every second that went by, she was more sure that this was a test, and until the instructrix said she could move or talk, she wasn't going to.

If she passed the test, she would learn how to fight and protect herself. How to protect Mom, even if she was just a kid. And then, pirates or not, she wouldn't have to be afraid again. No more nightmares of slavers and other kids screaming, and not being able to do anything to help them. She wouldn't fail.

Now the prickle felt like burning, and Eliza wanted to itch so badly than her hands had started to prickle too. Would Instructrix Odrade blame her if she just rubbed her foot on her ankle, just one quick rub to take away the worst of the itch? She'd been so good, standing right where she'd been told for more than twenty minutes, without moving, without _talking_. Mom would never believe it. _What, my girl went for twenty minutes without talking? Are you sure she was breathing? Sweetie, were you asleep?_ Eliza tried to hold on to Mom's voice, to focus past the itch that wasn't an itch anymore but more like _burning_, but Mom's voice broke apart and scattered the harder she tried to listen to it.

_I'm gonna itch,_ Eliza thought, as the burning flared in her hands too. _I'm gonna itch and I'm gonna fail_.

The hairs on the back of her neck stood on end, like a light, cool hand had just traced the line of her spine, and that finished her. Eliza let out a low whine, her eyes squeezing shut, and crashed down onto her knees, scrabbling at the hem of her pants to get at the itch, the _stupid stupid itch_.

The relief lasted only for a few seconds, before shame came crashing down on her. _Nice going, _she thought, baring her teeth as she scraped the skin raw on her shin, sucking in one lungful after another of ozone-scented air. _Didn't even get back the first day. _

"Twenty-three minutes, seven seconds," said Instructrix Odrade. Eliza cringed as two gentle hands, glowing softly, settled on her shoulders, and waited for the inevitable next sentence: _Thank you for trying, but you didn't make it into the class._

At least she would be able to try again in two years, when she turned fourteen, but she would still have to go home and face Mom's disappointment. She swallowed hard and straightened her shoulders, ignoring the comforting squeeze the instructrix gave her.

_Here it comes._

"Not a record, but quite respectable, especially for someone your age. Not many novices hold up much longer against a localized field like that."

Eliza craned her neck around to try and read the instructrix's expression, waiting for the punchline, but all she got was a warm smile and another squeeze as the biotic glow around the asari's hands faded.

"The class average is twenty-four minutes, sixteen seconds," Instructrix Odrade went on. "So you weren't that far off." Her hands slipped from Eliza's shoulders, and she took a step back.

Eliza rose, a little unsteady, and turned around to stare at the instructrix. "So I didn't fail?" she asked, all her other questions forgotten for the moment.

"Fail?" Instructrix Odrade cocked her head. "Oh, no one _fails_ this test, Eliza. It's not like a test you have in your classes, it's more like the tests your mother does. Those tests tell her where the problems are, where weak spots need to be shored up." She gave Eliza a bright smile, but Eliza frowned back, still not convinced.

"So, I have a lot of problems, right?"

The instructrix threw back her head and laughed, then turned an even brighter smile on Eliza. "All of you do, even the students I've had for years." She reached out and touched Eliza's cheek with her thumb. "And they're not _problems, _so much as they're clues that tell me wheat we need to work on. This test tells me about your control, and your willingness to listen. You humans do biotics a disservice — even many asari do — by thinking of them as a science. Of course science is behind them, and science can be used to study them and predict them, but their actual use? It's an art. You must _feel_ them, like a dance." She pulled her hand away from Eliza's cheek and gave her a measuring look. "What do you see, when you picture your biotics? Do you feel anything?"

Not once had anyone asked Eliza that, not in years of medical exams and tests. Everyone wanted to know if she felt healthy, or if she had headaches, or if her amp overheated. No one wanted to know what it felt like when she reached out for the knot of cool, bright sparks that clustered near her amp, and how the sparks reached for her when they sensed her coming close. Pulling away was always so hard, like she was slamming a door on the best parts of herself.

No one wanted to know that. But the instructrix did, so Eliza licked her lips and tried to answer.

"It feels like — sometimes it feels like sparks, a whole big ball of them in the back of my head, but then sometimes it feels like a wave." She caught the inside of her lip in her teeth, searching for the right words. "Not an ocean wave, but more like sound waves? The way they look on a vidscreen, jumping and leaping and —"

"Dancing," finished the instructrix, staring down at Eliza with a new smile, a soft smile. "The dancing wave."

"Yeah," said Eliza, pleased with herself for being understood. She had gotten that much right, at least. "And that's when it feels not — easy, but best. Like I could just reach out and grab it, and then it would show me what to do." She looked up through her lashes at the instructrix, struck through by a heavy shyness. "Is that…right?"

The instructrix just kept smiling, her eyes warm and brown even in the blue light. "It sounds like you already know how to begin," she said, after a long pause. "Can you reach for it now? The wave?"

Eliza started to say yes, then caught herself. "I…I think so. Is that okay?" The habit of _not_ reaching, _not _touching, no matter how badly she wanted to, seemed impossible to break.

"Yes, it's okay — more than okay." The instructrix walked around behind Eliza before bending down, until her chin almost touched Eliza's shoulder. "May I show you a trick? It might help." When Eliza nodded, she lifted Eliza's right arm and held it straight out in front of them, and rolled Eliza's hand into a fist.

"Just like that. When you reach for the wave, raise your arm and clench your fist."

"Why?" Eliza asked, frowning at her fingers. "What does it do?"

"It's a mnemonic. Like a study trick, but for your body. Once you connect using your biotics in certain ways with a specific movement, your nerves will remember how to act." She turned Eliza so they faced a pile of cushions. "There. Now, when I tell you to, I want you to reach for that wave — hold it hard — and wait until you feel it stop jumping to move your arm. And when you do move, I want you to focus on that cushion." The instructrix pointed at the top of the pile. "You're going to move it."

"Uh," said Eliza. "Okay." She gave herself a shake to get rid of the jitters in her belly, and took a deep breath.

"And — reach."

Eliza snatched at the wave. Out of the darkness in her mind, it rose, reaching for her, twisting around her fingers, eager to move, to _dance._ She fixed her eyes on the cushion, not blinking, not even breathing.

_Move_, she thought, as she raised her arm and clenched her fist.

* * *

Eliza _never_ missed a meal, not unless she was sick. Even then, the empty pit of her stomach sometimes won over a fever or nausea. So when the time for dinner came and went, and Eliza still hadn't come home, Hannah began to worry. She'd ordered pizza to celebrate Eliza's first class, with extra-extra cheese and plenty of mushrooms, but for the past hour, the pizzas had been in the oven, waiting to be devoured.

_She's with Lamia_, Hannah told herself. _She's fine. And if she had managed to blow herself or the ship up, I'd know by now. Besides, there aren't that many places she can hide on a science vessel. Other than the drive core. _

_Oh god, I need a drink_.

"Mom! _Mom!_" The door to their quarters had barely started to open before Eliza slammed through, shoving her backpack through first and then tripping over it as she pushed her way into the kitchen. "Mom! It was _great! _I held still for more than twenty minutes and Instructrix Odrade told me that she saw the wave in her head too and I knocked a cushion off all the others twice in a row and I learned how to flare my corona and — ow." She rubbed her temples, wincing but still smiling. "I have a headache," she said, a little sheepishly. "But it felt so good! Like I was untying a knot inside my head! And she said we'll keep doing the private lessons until I'm ready to join the rest of the class but that should be pretty soon! She even said she'd call me Shepard. Ooh, did you get pizza? How much cheese? Is there enough?"

Hannah couldn't stop laughing, from relief and pure joy, even when Eliza growled and flopped on top of her, a sweaty tangle of limbs and braids. "Glad you had a good time, sweetie," she said, patting Eliza's arm. "And yes, I did order pizza, but I think a shower is in order first. You smell like a locker room."

"But I'm _hungry_."

"Shower, _now_." Hannah pulled Eliza's arms from around her neck. "Or I'm eating both pizzas by myself."

"Highway robbery!" Eliza yelled, her voice shrill and breaking with endorphins, and that set Hannah off again, until she was facedown on the table, tears leaking from the corners of her eyes. "I declare a mutiny!"

"Shower!" Hannah said into the tabletop. "Now, and that's an order."

When Eliza padded off, still giddy and out of breath, Hannah wiped her eyes and pulled up her omni-tool display.

Lamia answered immediately. "No more trouble with nightmares, I'd say," she said, before Hannah could open her mouth. "She took to it like — what's the human phrase? — a duck to water. She's nearly a prodigy, but that _posture._ It's like no one's told her to sit up straight in her life."

Hannah cleared her throat. "Well, that aside," she said, not missing the way Lamia's eyes sharpened as she hedged. "She's happy?"

"She's overjoyed." Lamia smiled. "She still needs to learn the value of patience. She wants everything now, if not sooner, but once she learns control, well, I wouldn't want to go up against her." Lamia leaned forward and balanced her chin on her fist. "The pirate attack knocked her back, but she's resilient. We should give her more credit. She doesn't see the shame in others' fears, only her own. That, we can fix. And then there's no stopping her."

"Already a terror at twelve." Hannah sighed, a heavy weight twisting at her heart. A week of nightmares, of Eliza sobbing helplessly, was too much to bear. If they weren't already dead, Hannah would have slaughtered the pirates just for that. "Lamia, I can't thank you enough. I know you could have done more with the program, but —" She spread her hands wide, struggling for what to say. "You're…"

"I told you that when she was ready, I would come." Lamia gave her a steady look, almost as warm as an embrace. "I promised you that, Hannah. I keep my promises."

There was nothing to say to that, no words that could convey all her gratitude, so Hannah didn't try. What a pair they made, the asari matron and the Alliance captain, herding their small, wild Eliza away from danger. "So we'll see you tomorrow?" she said, and knew that Lamia understood when she smiled and nodded.

"Tomorrow."


	6. F is for Form

**_The Citadel, September 2169_**

* * *

Six months of the _Eleanor _docked at the Citadel. Six months of living on a space station, not a science vessel. Six months of real food and actual trees and _clouds_. There was Chinese food here, _actual Chinese food_, not the reconstituted stuff from back on the _Eleanor_, and Shepard's bedroom had a real window. If she wanted to run here, she didn't have to try and content herself with a few laps around the biotics classroom; she could sprint through neighborhood after neighborhood until her legs burned, a fast-shift kaleidoscope of faces and voices spinning around her.

So why couldn't she get rid of the sour taste in her mouth?

_Probably because when class schedules came out last night, mine had "ballroom dancing"_ _written right at the top. _Shepard glared one last time at the offending datapad before she flicked off its display. It had to be a practical joke, though whether her mother or Lamia was at fault, Shepard didn't know. Maybe _they_ thought it was a joke, but it felt like a punishment — worse, a punishment for something she didn't even know she had done wrong.

She didn't mind dancing. As soon as she had turned three and her biotics manifested, Mom had signed her up for every movement-based class their ship offered for little kids, and that meant ballet, jazz, gymnastics — if it meant Shepard came home too sleepy to send the furniture flying, then Mom had her enrolled. Gymnastics was always the best class, but dance had its appeal too: good music, lots of laughing, no competition except against her reflection in the mirror. When she started training with Lamia, she had to stop everything else. There simply wasn't time, but once Shepard felt her biotics respond to her silent commands, she didn't need any other class. She had all she wanted, hidden along her nervous system.

And Lamia managed to combine biotics training with hand-to-hand combat and endurance training, so even if Shepard _wanted_ to keep dancing, she wouldn't have been able to. Five three-hour classes a week meant she barely had the energy to do her homework. If that had been Lamia's purpose from the beginning, Shepard wouldn't have been surprised.

But _ballroom dancing?_ That was about as uncool as possible. The fact that the class was even offered at all on the Citadel was a surprise. Shepard had hoped something as hopelessly dorky would have gotten left behind on Earth, where it couldn't embarrass them in front of the other races.

_I bet it appeals to Lamia,_ she thought, rolling on her stomach and burying her face in her pillows. _All that fluffy romantic stuff. Just like those stupid vids she watches. Why do I have to get stuck with it? _

At least the rest of her schedule looked promising: history of the krogan rebellions, a seminar on the turian Unification War taught by Agrippina Deloris herself, applied physics, Spanish — a cake class if there ever was one, thanks to Mom. Things couldn't go too wrong, even with _ballroom dancing_ in her future.

Shepard groaned and threw off her covers. Even the air felt different here, more like a living thing than just something she breathed in, breathed out, and forgot. And if she didn't miss her guess, there were scrambled eggs with peppers cooking in the other room.

She shoved into a pair of leggings and a loose tunic, and pinned her long braid around her head. A quick glance in the mirror told her nothing new: still skinny, still pale, dark eyebrows winging high over cold eyes, too many freckles. At least she was tall; maybe she'd be too tall for anyone to want to partner with her, and she'd have to choose another class.

Wouldn't that be a shame?

_Keep a good thought,_ she told herself, and bared her teeth in her mirror as her stomach rumbled. _But first, breakfast. _

* * *

"Your posture," said Lamia, with one of her bright, infuriating smiles.

"My posture," Shepard repeated, a miserable flush seeping into her cheeks. "That's why I have to take ballroom dancing. Right."

"You humans say form follows function," Lamia went on, still smiling. "But really, they're the same thing for a biotic. Your form _is_ the function, so far as your nervous system is concerned. You have all the power, all the determination, that I could wish for — but you _slouch_. It's lazy, Shepard."

"I get results," snapped Shepard. "It's not like I wave my arms around and nothing happens. My posture shouldn't matter."

Lamia cocked her head, the tattoos above her eyes arching in wry amusement. _Really, Shepard_, said her expression.

If Shepard didn't already know she would lose the fight, she would have been thrown a punch, or a Singularity, but Lamia would have turned her into a red smear on the wall without breaking a sweat. She settled for a glower, and for sinking even deeper in her seat.

"Oh please, aren't you a little old to be sulking?" Lamia rolled her eyes. "Shepard, I'm not going to threaten you with being forbidden from lessons unless you take the class, but I strongly recommend that you do. Control over your body is control over your biotics. I _cannot_ stress this enough — but I _can_ think of far more unpleasant ways for you to improve your form."

Now it was Shepard's turn to raise incredulous brows.

"I have already thought of three," said Lamia, her tone dangerously close to a promise.

Shepard took the hint. As gracelessly as she could manage — _if you think my posture was bad before, Lamia, check _this_ out_ — she flounced toward the door, her backpack slung over one shoulder and her feet slip-sliding noisily over the floor.

"Five, Shepard," Lamia called after her.

* * *

The class was fuller than Shepard expected. Most of the students were humans, from a pack of giggling ten-year-old girls with matching pigtails, to an elderly couple already practicing steps in front of a wall of mirrors. A few asari clustered in one corner, whispering to each other, and two turians stood awkwardly in the middle of the room, heads swiveling back and forth as they tried to watch everyone at once.

All told, there had to be almost fifty people in the class — more than enough camouflage for Shepard's humiliation. And — small but merciful blessings — none of those fifty people had a face that she recognized.

_Maybe it won't be so bad_, thought Shepard, as she leaned against the wall. She ducked her head, willing herself to be as small and inconspicuous as possible. _I don't know anyone here, and no one's even looking at me. I'm just one more human. Nothing to see her. _

"Sh—_Eliza?_"

_Oh for fuck's sake_, she thought, her back tightening as soon as she heard the voice, a wave of perfect, embarrassed resignation sweeping over her. _It had to be _him. _Can this get any worse?_ She raised her head slowly, refusing to make eye contact with the speaker till the last second. "It's _Shepard_," she said, when the inevitable couldn't be delayed any longer, and she stared up at Michael Burton through her lashes.

Michael Burton. The bully, the snot-faced little prick who made tormenting her his life's work when they were twelve, screaming about pirates killing her mother and leaving her all alone. He'd done it all with a smirk too, like baiting her was the best thing that had ever happened to him.

"Yeah, _Shepard_," he said, with the same smug grin, the grin that dared her to smash her fist through it. "Didn't expect to see you here."

"Whatever." She stood slowly, one hand braced on the wall behind her in case she wobbled on her unaccustomed high heels, and craned her neck to see over his shoulder. _Someone had a growth spurt_, she thought, fighting a swell of grudging admiration. He had to top her by at least two inches, even with her heels on, and had the broad chest and shoulders to match. Narrow hips, lean legs — a swimmer's body, sleekly muscled and —

She cut off the thought, not before she flushed, and then a hot plug of anger stopped up her throat. Michael Burton was not _hot_. He was not _cute._ He was an asshole who liked trying to scare people, that was all, and Shepard hated bullies.

"Your mom still with the _Eleanor_?" he asked as she started to ease around him. Something in his voice caught her off-guard, and Shepard hesitated long enough for the tiny, nut-brown instructor to come bustling up to them.

"Oh!" he cried, and the delight in his voice cut through the low hum of conversation in the room. Shepard's heart sank; she already knew what he was going to say. "Do you two already know each other? Capital! Capital! And of a height! What a pair!"

Shepard had never felt trapped before, but she felt it then, as the instructor took her hand and placed it in Michael's.

* * *

She could feel the heat of Michael's hand through her shirt, resting on the curve of her waist, and she had to close her eyes and breathe through her nose until the urge to shove him away passed. All she could hear was his voice, three years younger, gleeful and wild: _slavers! Slavers! They'll get you and no one will ever find you. _

Michael cleared his throat, and Shepard nearly tore herself out of his arms. "So, why are you —"

"Shut up," Shepard hissed, not looking at him, touching him as little as possible. "Don't talk to me. I don't want to hear it. Just dance."

Michael's face crumpled, and Shepard had long enough to feel guilty before his features went rigid and he fixed his gaze over her head.

The first strains of the waltz filtered through the comms, and Shepard decided that she'd play that song as she tore Lamia's head off her shoulders. She'd even make sure to stand up straight while she did it.

* * *

The idea would have seemed ridiculous to Shepard an hour before, but dancing in silence with Michael was even worse than attempting conversation. Every other pair in the room managed at least some conversation, even if it amounted to laughing at each other as they stumbled through the basic steps. She and Michael stonily refused to speak to each other, barely touching, not even making eye contact.

Shepard stifled a sigh. She'd been the one to tell him to shut up, and she'd have to be the one to break the silence. Or was it a stalemate?

"So," she said, with a glance up at Michael's face. He stared over her head, not blinking, with a muscle ticking in his jaw. "Ballroom dancing."

He gave her a short nod. Shepard held down another sigh, and pushed forward.

"Why'd you get stuck with this class? Did you start up with your old asshole routine again, and someone finally got sick of it?"

The muscle in his jaw jumped again, but Michael didn't reply. He kept steering them through the other couples, leading her with sure, firm hands.

"Come on," said Shepard, knowing _she_ was being the asshole, and unable to stop herself. It felt good to push him, to goad him about being a cruel little kid, and to take back a little pride for herself, and for the scared girl she had been. "I mean, it had to happen sooner or later. Being cute couldn't get you out of everything forever."

Michael's eyes flickered down to hers, his dark eyebrows lifting. "Cute, huh?" he said, and the smug, satisfied edge in his voice was so familiar that Shepard _was_ twelve again, for a heartbeat, and the sudden shift had her stumbling over her own feet. "Aw, Shepard, I didn't know you cared."

"I don't — goddammit, you shit," she snarled, and drove the heel of her shoe into his foot as he spun her around. Michael barely flinched, and his smile sharpened. _I should have kept my mouth shut_, Shepard thought, in savage fury — at him, at herself, and at Lamia for putting her in this position. She felt the first telltale shiver in her fingers and counted the heavy thud of her pulse until the urge to let her biotics faded. If she flared her corona in public, Lamia would never forgive her. "You were a fucking asshole, okay? You made my life miserable, you got away with it, and now you're _here. _So go ahead, laugh it up. You get a second chance. But better take your shots now, because I sure as hell am _not_ sticking around for more of this."

Shepard knew the pairs around them were staring, and that some of the younger couples were tripping each other because they were too busy listening to her to pay attention to the music, but once she started talking, she couldn't stop. The infection went so much deeper than she thought; she had to dig it out by the root.

She took a deep breath, ready to release more of the flood, more _you're an asshole, I cried every night for a week and you laughed, and nobody laughs at me, and now I can smash you into a wall before you know what's happening — _

"I'm sorry," said Michael, low and sincere enough to send a shiver up Shepard's spine.

She closed her mouth so quickly she caught the tip of her tongue in her teeth, and the sudden bright stab of pain made her tighten her hand on Michael's. He squeezed back.

"I was a total asshole," he added, still in the same low voice. "And I — I'm serious, Shepard, I'm sorry. What else do you want me to say?"

Shepard shrugged. She felt deflated, like Michael's apology had pricked her in the lungs and all her air leaked out through the tiny hole left behind.

"You want to step on my foot again?" he asked.

The question startled a laugh out of her; it left her mouth in a shrill, jagged run that caught the attention of everyone nearby who hadn't been listening before. "Shut up," she said, still laughing. "Or I will."

"If it'll make you feel better," said Michael, steering them out of the crowd and out toward the edge of the crowd. The music filtered through to Shepard distantly, but Michael kept them moving confidently through the steps. All she had to do was follow his lead.

"You've done this before," said Shepard. She let some of her admiration slip into her voice — easier than apologizing.

"Every week." Michael adjusted his hand on her waist; he didn't draw her closer, but she felt the heat of his palm through her thin shirt, and stared down at their feet to hide her flush.

_It's Michael Burton,_ she scolded herself. _I hate him. He's an asshole. He doesn't mean it when he says he's sorry. He probably just wants something. _

"My mom made me come with my big sister," Michael said. "I hated it at first. Stupid girly dancing, right? But then, about a year ago, I realized that I, uh, liked it. It's simple. Swimming's great and all, but there's so much pressure. I have to win for it to mean anything. But dancing? That's easy. You just show up, you follow the steps, and it's…easy." He cleared his throat, smiling crookedly at a point over Shepard's shoulder.

"And the fact that you're surrounded by girls means nothing, right?" Shepard said, wishing she could yank the words back into her mouth as soon as Michael looked down at her, surprised and wary. She smiled up at him and shrugged, another wordless apology.

"Why're you here?" he asked, still smiling, still not quite making eye contact. "You mouth off to someone?"

"Not _quite_," Shepard hedged. "Biotics training. It's supposed to help my control, or something."

"Or something? You're not going to blow me up or —" Michael stopped. "Sorry. Forget I said anything."

"No, it's okay. I'm used to it." Shepard blew her bangs out of her eyes. "I'm out of the walking-bomb stage of things. The worst I'd do is accidentally shock you."

"Or step on my foot."

"Or that," Shepard said, not realizing she had flashed Michael a grin until he smiled back. _He has dimples_, she thought, her stomach flipping in a strange, almost pleasant way. _But I hate him. And his dimples. _

"Like I said, you can do it if it makes you feel better." Michael shifted his hand on her waist again; this time, he drew her closer, adjusted her position to match his, and hating him suddenly seemed impossible, with his warmth spreading over her skin. "But I…I am sorry, Shepard."

"Stop apologizing," she said, more harshly than she intended. "It's…it's not fine, but it's done. Just forget it and dance, okay?"

"Okay."

* * *

"So," said Lamia, as Shepard came into her classroom. "You survived, with pride and slouch intact. Was it as torturous as you thought it would be?"

"Not exactly." Shepard slipped out of her shoes and pulled off her hoodie. "It was lame, but I guess I can see why it works." Without turning around, she moved to the warm-up equipment, focusing on the weights instead of on Lamia's expression. If she turned around, she knew she'd give herself away, and she couldn't handle Lamia's particular brand of self-satisfaction, not when she still felt Michael's hand on her back.

"So you'll be going back on Wednesday?" Lamia's voice gave nothing away.

Shepard nodded, still not turning around. "Guess I'll give it another shot," she replied, hefting a twenty-pound weight in her left hand.

After all, Michael's form had been perfect.


	7. G is for Guardian

**_The Citadel, October 2169_**

After a month of ballroom dancing, Shepard had a blister on each heel, a sore ankle from a misstep during a combination, and a smile that refused to fully disappear.

She did her best to hide the smile from her mother and Lamia; if her mother saw it, there would be uncomfortable questions that led to lectures about responsibility and possibly contraceptives, and if Lamia saw it, there would be a silent _I-told-you-so _that would last longer than Shepard might be alive. Neither was a particularly attractive concept, so Shepard hid her smile, and did her best to act like ballroom dancing was still only one step up from being affected with leprosy.

A smile that determined to exist, however, was also a smile equally determined to be discovered, and Shepard knew she had a ticking clock suspended over her head, counting down the minutes until someone caught her out.

The countdown ended one night at dinner.

Lamia had begged off joining them — she freely admitted that Shepard was her favorite student ("Most of the time," she always amended, darkly) with what was, to Shepard, a surprising amount of candor, but obvious favoritism couldn't be excused. Shepard spent most of her nights alone with her mother, trying different kinds of takeout, going to see movies, getting lost in the Wards. Sometimes one of Shepard's friends came along, sometimes one of Mom's joined them, but more often than not, the two of them explored by themselves.

Sometimes, Shepard thought they must seem like a country all on their own, with closed borders and a language incomprehensible to everyone outside. One of the side effects of having only each other to depend on for so long, as they moved from ship to ship, project to project, but the tangled layers of inside jokes and obscure references tended to scare off potential emigrees. Lamia was one exception, and so were Commander Forbes and her kids, and Hackett, and Anderson, but all of them had known Shepard and Mom for years. They had _earned_ the right to share the jokes. It was rare to find someone willing to put in the time, and Shepard never complained. She liked the quiet borders, the peace, the comfort of coming home from school and flopping on the couch, with her legs spilling over the arm and her head pillowed on Mom's thigh. She never had to worry if Mom would understand what she meant, or what she needed. Mom always knew.

And _that_ was the problem.

"So, you going to tell me why you've been grinning like a maniac for the past few weeks, or do I get to play twenty questions?"

Shepard didn't look up; that was a rookie's mistake. Mom would be able to read everything she wanted to know in the tiniest twitch of her mouth, so she took her time setting her fork to one side, wiping her mouth, and taking a long drink of water before she made eye contact.

"Don't let me ruin your fun, Mom," she said calmly. _I'm good, I'm so good,_ she thought, smiling a perfectly benign, insipid smile. "I'm not saying anything."

"Oh, _good_," said Mom. She leaned forward on her elbow, her chin propped up in her hand and her own fork — still full of mashed potatoes and gravy — forgotten on the side of her plate. "I was so bored at work today, this'll be a nice change. Is it larger than a breadbox?"

The game always started with the same question. Shepard said "Yes," willing herself not to flush as she thought of warm, broad shoulders — definitely larger than a breadbox.

"Is it human?"

"Yes."

"Is it male or female?"

Shepard felt a wicked urge to say _yes_, followed by an even more wicked urge to say _definitely male_, just to see the look on Mom's face, but decided on self-preservation. "Male," she said, then "Come on, Mom, yes or no questions only. Don't get cute with the rules."

"Don't sass me, my girl, or the last thing I'll be is cute." Mom finally remembered her fork, and finished her mashed potatoes with a faraway, considering look. "Do I know him?" she asked.

Shepard frowned. A thorny question. Technically, no, Mom didn't know Michael. She had never met him, but she'd certainly heard _of_ him. Saying _yes_ would bring the conversation to a screeching halt; forget the lecture about contraceptives, Shepard would have to lock her mother in the bathroom to keep her from storming off into the Citadel to find Michael. Hannah Shepard held grudges like a krogan.

But saying _no_ was almost a lie, and saying _sort of_ was against the rules and would only prompt more questions. She could pass on the question, but with seventeen more potential questions to come, did she want to use up her one pass so soon in the game?

_No isn't really a lie_, she thought. _She never met him, not really. _

"No," she said, smoothly, and Mom just nodded.

"Is he in one of your classes?"

"Yes," said Shepard, still amazed her little dance around the truth had worked. She felt guilty, a sweet-sharp pang in her chest, but more than that, she felt relief. _Live to fight another day. _

"Is he someone you know from one of my other postings?"

That question struck too close, and Shepard was out of ways to buy herself more time. "Yes," she answered, eyes back on her plate. A few minutes ago, she'd been ready for thirds of meatloaf and mashed potatoes. Now she couldn't stomach the thought of another mouthful. Oh, Mom would figure it out, and then she'd have to make her excuses, and explain that Michael had apologized, and _meant it_ — but would Mom believe it?

_She had better_, Shepard told herself. _I believed him, and I was the one he was an asshole to, not her. _

Her mother had been the one to deal with her nightmares, though, so the grudge wasn't completely unreasonable — but Shepard had hoped, if this tiny seed she had spent the past two weeks carrying around in her chest ever got a change to grow, that her mother would try to like Michael, just a little.

"Is he Michael Burton?"

"Yes — _what_?" Shepard squawked, throwing herself back in her chair until it rocked back on its two rear legs. "You _knew? _Mom!"

"Of course I knew," said Mom airily, lifting her beer glass and draining it with a wink at Shepard. "You left yourself signed in on my terminal a week ago, and you were on his school profile. Not too hard to connect the dots, sweetie." She lowered her glass to the table, and then lowered her brows at Shepard. "Nice wordplay there, by the way. _No_, when I ask if I know him."

"You don't," Shepard replied, her guilt vanishing as an obscure feeling of being betrayed swept over her. "That was true."

"God, please don't tell me you're going to be a lawyer." Mom sighed and pushed her plate and glass back, folding her hands on the table in front of her.

_Oh no,_ Shepard thought, flushing with embarrassment and misery. _The lecture._

"Sweetie, just let me ask this one question. You're old enough to start making your own decisions about this sort of thing, but I can't help remembering what happened, and — do _you_ feel safe?"

"Safe?" said Shepard, puzzled. "I don't —"

"Sometimes kids are assholes," said Mom. "I was, Lamia probably was a million years ago, and I have it on good authority that you were sometimes too. But he was _mean_, and he liked it. Has that changed?"

Shepard picked at the edge of her plate with her thumbnail. She had asked herself that question every day since seeing Michael again; she believed he was sorry, she believed he was different now, but that didn't do anything to change what he had been, and what he had done. Three and a half years meant very little in a galaxy where people regularly lived to be over a thousand years old; a lot could and did happen in that much time, but sometimes, deep down in the dark, the roots stayed the same.

Had Michael's?

"I think so," she said, gnawing at the inside of her lip. "He doesn't laugh when other people fall. He helps them up instead. And I think that's good. It's worth a try." She gnawed her lip again, and frowned when she tasted blood. Where had this habit come from? "He's worth a try."

Mom sighed, gustily, and leaned back in her chair, spinning her beer glass with a faint, rueful smile on her face. "Well, you know best," she said slowly. "But if he hurts you, I'll hurt him."

"Mom," Shepard said, with a smile of her own.

"Twice."

"Oh my _god_." Shepard fell backward in her chair, lolling her neck to stare up at the ceiling. "You're actually like, hoping he messes up, aren't you?"

"Well," said Mom, tapping her finger on her glass. "It's good to have something to look forward to."

"Yeah, maybe, but not when you're threatening to kill your daughter's —" Shepard hesitated. What had she been about to say? _Crush_? That didn't seem to cover the range of acrobatics her stomach went through when Michael put his hand on her waist, or when he smiled as he saw her approach through a crowded room. _Boyfriend_? That just seemed hopelessly optimistic. "—friend," she finished, lamely.

Mom sighed. "Fine. Consider all death threats against Michael Burton suspended until further notice." She rose and leaned over the table to brush the back of her knuckles against Shepard's cheek. "You're not stupid," she said, "and I know you're careful, but I'm your mother, so I have to say this. If he's not worth it, don't waste your time. And…be careful."

Shepard nodded. It wasn't a blessing, not by a long shot, but it was a start.

And she'd managed to escape the lecture on contraceptives. Small blessings.

* * *

Class wouldn't start for another fifteen minutes, but Shepard had over-estimated how long it would take to get ready. Not wanting to stick around and endure Mom's pointed looks at her new dress and extra layer of mascara, Shepard had escaped to class, and found herself with nothing to do until Michael walked in.

The dress and mascara did their duty; he stopped in the doorway when he saw her, mouth open, then made his way to her with a smile, the damned dimples on display. Shepard smiled back, more pleased than she could admit that she wasn't blushing, and decided to let him be the first one to say something. She didn't trust her mouth to do more than smile anyways; she'd watched the door like a hawk, looking away whenever someone who wasn't Michael walked in, then turning back to the door until it opened again. If someone expected her to talk, nothing except vowel sounds would come out.

"You," he said, as soon as he didn't have to shout to be heard, "you look, uh, nice."

Shepard resisted the urge to roll her eyes. '_Uh, nice?' That's the best he can do? _

_Take it as a compliment_, said Lamia's voice, bored and wry in equal measure. _He's sixteen, and you rendered him speechless. 'Uh, nice' is probably all he's capable of. _

"Hey," she said, with what she hoped was a stunning smile, worthy of her dress. "Ready for class?"

"Uh," he said again, still smiling himself, but looking a little concussed around the edges. "Yeah?" he added. "I was, but…" He laughed. "Now you're just rubbing my face in it, Shepard."

"I'm _what_?" she asked, inching a little closer. Her stomach, far from doing any acrobatics at all, no longer seemed to be in her body. _Fair enough_, she thought. _I'm not really on the Citadel anymore. _"How am I doing that?"

"Because you _hate _me," Michael said, with something new in his smile — regret, maybe, but Shepard couldn't concentrate enough to figure it out — "And you look like _that._"

"Oh," said Shepard, startled by his honesty. "Should I get changed?" she asked, at a total loss for anything else to say. Her entire plan for the day had been limited to _show up looking really good_. It appeared she'd have to start thinking strategically, rather than tactically.

"What? Hell no!" said Michael, looking horrified. "I mean, unless you want to," he added in a low, shy voice, finally looking away from Shepard.

_We're horrible at this_, thought Shepard. Michael's confidence on the dance floor had been misleading; he was obviously just as ill-equipped to handle this — whatever it was — as she. She wished briefly for a handbook, for five minutes for an extranet search, for a supernova to smite them all, then straightened her back. Neither of them knew what to do? Fine. It made them a team.

"I think," she said, and waited till Michael looked at her again to go on. "I think we should get through class, and then we should get something to eat. Together," she clarified. "At the same place." Shepard winced as soon as the words left her mouth — _dumbass, he _knows_ that you meant together_ —but instead of rolling his own eyes, Michael nodded, practically vibrating with relief.

"Okay," he said. "Sounds good. Really good." His smile turned into a sly, secretive grin. "Maybe tapas? There's this great place on Zakera Ward, and we _are_ tangoing today."

Shepard laughed and punched his arm, and sucked in a gasp when he caught her hand and held it. This close, she could smell the harsh scent of chlorine that never really left Michael's hair or skin, and the surprisingly appealing smell of his sweat. They stared at each other, in a bubble of silence, smiling stupidly, until the instructor clapped his hands.

It was for the best, Shepard mused as Michael let go of her hand and stepped back so she could toe into her high heels. The middle of her dance class wasn't where she wanted to have her first kiss — though she wanted to be kissed, very badly.

"Tango, huh?" she said. "Sounds fun. Not like I'll ever get to do it outside of class, but here goes."

This time, Michael did roll his eyes, but he took her into his arms without comment.

* * *

When she put her hands into her jacket pocket — she wasn't sure what to do with them, and unless they were occupied she'd fidget and pick at her nails — Shepard felt a thin foil package shift under her fingers.

Michael paused at the door, realizing Shepard wasn't at his side any longer. "You okay?" he asked, shifting from foot to foot. "Shepard?"

She'd missed the lecture on contraceptives, but she should have known Mom would find a way to get that point across, no matter what.

"I'm fine," she said, through a bright smile as she reminded herself to yell at Mom later. "Let's go." She looped her arm through his, kissing his cheek on impulse.

_Much_ later, she decided, as Michael led her out into Zakera Ward.


End file.
